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Of all the musicians I’ve been introduced (and reintroduced) to via my scribbling here at MOKB, South Pasadena’s Chris Hickey is easily one of my favorites. A folk-rock Jim Jarmusch, this cat is a criminally under-appreciated artist, whether with band (Show of Hands, Uma), as hired gun (Joe Henry, Michael Penn, Indigo Girls) or as solo artist. And I have to believe there’s a parallel universe in which Hickey is in high demand as a Super Bowl halftime performer. What a droll and wonderful world that must be.

But there’s an outside chance that Hickey’s following may actually expand in the coming weeks, even without that Super Bowl tie-in. Thanks to perseverance and technology, his first two solo LPs (1987’s Looking For Anything and 1985’s Frames Of Mind, Boundaries Of Time) are available again. If you’re not hip to Hickey or his tremendous catalog, you really oughta check him out, starting with Looking for Anything’sDark, Cold Day, which features lyrics lifted (with permission) from the poem In Memory of W.B. Yeats by W.H. Auden. The lesson here is clear. If you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.